Manchester Piccadilly is the principal railway station in Manchester, England. Opened as Store Street in 1842, it was renamed Manchester London Road in 1847 and Manchester Piccadilly in 1960. Located to the south-eastern side of Manchester city centre, it hosts long-distance intercity and cross-country services to national destinations including London, Birmingham, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Bristol and Southampton; regional services to destinations in Northern England including Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, Newcastle and York; and local commuter services around Greater Manchester. It is one of 19 major stations managed by national railway infrastructure company Network Rail. The station was built by the Manchester and Birmingham Railway company, having been designed by their chief engineer, the civil engineer George W. Buck. When first opened on 8 May 1842, it consisted of a pair of platforms and a few office buildings; from the start, Store Street station was shared between the M&BR and the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway . The station was quickly overwhelmed by demand, resulting in multiple expansion schemes being performed during the mid-to-late 1800s; it was during these that the station received it expansive iron and glass trainshed, along its large concourse and a great many platforms. Perhaps the most extensive rebuild occurred during the 1960s, performed as an element of the West Coast Main Line modernisation programme by the national rail operating company British Railways. Despite being expanded multiple times, it has often struggled to cope with demand, contributing to the creation of the neighboring Manchester Mayfield and Manchester Central stations. Further schemes, such as the proposed Picc-Vic tunnel project, were ultimately left unpursued. Piccadilly is the busiest station in the Manchester station group with more than 25 million passenger entries and exits between April 2015 and March 2016, . It is the fourth busiest station in the United Kingdom outside London. The station hosts services from six train operating companies. It is the second busiest interchange station outside London, with almost 3.8 million passengers changing trains there annually. According to an independent poll carried out in 2007, Manchester Piccadilly had the highest customer satisfaction level of any UK station, with 92% of passengers satisfied compared with the national average of 60%. The station has twelve terminal platforms in the train shed and two through platforms to the south of it. Piccadilly is also a major interchange with the Metrolink light rail system with two tram platforms in its undercroft. In recent years, various alterations have been performed at Piccadilly. On 20 July 1992, a new underground stop for the Manchester Metrolink light rail network was opened at the station, which was originally known as the ‘’’Piccadilly Undercroft’’’. Between the late 1990s and early 2000s, Piccadilly Station was subject to an extensive refurbishment effort, taking five years and costing £100 million , it was the most expensive improvement on the UK rail network at the time. Further improvements and expansion plans have been mooted to occur at or around Piccadilly Station. During October 2016, a Transport and Works Act application was submitted for the construction of two extra platforms as part of the wider Manchester Piccadilly and Manchester Oxford Road Capacity Scheme. As of 2018, this application has not been approved by the government. To allow the facility to accommodate new high speed services provisioned under the High Speed 2, it has been proposed that five more platforms be constructed, as well as the reconfiguration of the Metrolink station. A preferred options of the proposed High Speed 3 programme shall also entail the construction of further platforms underneath many of Piccadilly’s existing ones.
Continue reading...From
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.